Book 16: The Varieties of Religious Experience

When I read Sapiens:, I found the chapter on the evolution of the role of religion in human life most interesting and something I wanted to go deeper on.

William James was a philosopher in the 1800s who shaped much of modern psychology.

I'm on vacation this week with Cilla and this seemed like some light vacation reading!

The Varieties of Religious Experience came about as the result of William James's legendary lecture series at The University of Edinburgh. It consisted of 20 Lectures, 2 courses of 10 lectures each. In this series, James examines in detail the nature of religion, expanding on pragmatism in the process. As part of the canon of modern philosophy and psychology, these lectures are both classic and relevant. When William James went to the University of Edinburgh in 1901 to deliver a series of lectures on "natural religion," he defined religion as "the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine."